I know I know, I have lots of incomplete things and just too much in Architecture in general, but I wasn't really expecting to upload this here at all. This is an about 1-level hold built in a very short period for the Ultimate Hold contest, which didn't actually happen because this was the only entry, so I'm looking at just making it a regular hold submission.

I want to have a relatively short test cycle on this: I think I've ironed out all the major bugs and such already, and it's pretty short, so I'd just like two or three other people to play through it and maybe poke a couple of things for me.

What is this hold?:
This hold consists of the "Final Bastion" main level, with 7 serious puzzles based on mixups of the concepts used for my entry to the Standard Edition contest, one joke room, 2 simple puzzles required for navigation, and a bunch of cutscenes and decorations; and the "Distorted Spacetime" level, which is a small experiment with a prototype version of a weird custom element, featuring a few of what might be generously called puzzles but are actually pretty trivial if you understand how said element works. Since it was supposed to be the "ultimate" level its "story" is written as if a bunch of other events happened prior, but it shouldn't be too hard to follow since I didn't even have time myself to think out in detail what those earlier events would have been.

This hold is 100% "content-complete"; I have nothing I want to add to this, I just want it out there where people can see it. But I would be shirking my duties to ask for it to be promoted before at least a little testing.

Things to look out for:
-No cutscene should under any conditions kill the player (obviously).
-It shouldn't be possible to clear more than 5 of the main puzzle rooms without triggering the second cutscene in the Entrance before the sixth. (The scene triggers when the player has cleared 4 rooms or more, but the way the level navigates makes it possible to have cleared 5; you shouldn't be able to clear 6 rooms or more before seeing the scene).
-It shouldn't be possible to "escape" The Entrance in any way after walking into the room with a clean level. (The "semi-cutscene" that occurs under those conditions eventually sends the player to the other level).
-Any outstanding typos or grammar errors in the cutscenes, or if there's something in them you don't like and think could be improved.
-Any trivial-seeming solutions to the main puzzle rooms of Final Bastion, other than 1S1E.
-Any obviously buggy behavior in Distorted Spacetime, but remember that the intended behavior there looks strange.
-If you notice a really interesting way to solve a room, I guess I could add a challenge for it?

Things I don't want to do to this hold:
-Add any more puzzles (including making a "real" puzzle for 1S1E)
-Make sweeping changes to a puzzle that's working as intended
-Take out or replace a puzzle, if I can help it

I appreciate any and all help you're willing to give me. In the final final version of the hold I'll add a credits scroll probably in the entrance of Final Bastion with the names of everyone who helped out.

I started playing this and I really like it so far, including story and aesthetics. Of course I also liked the puzzles though I'm not done yet.
About the second cutscene, it triggered after I cleared (in this order) 2W, 1N2W, 1N1W, 1N1E, 2E, 1N2E; I suppose 2W and 2E are not main puzzles right?
About the puzzles, I'm pretty sure I did something unintended.

1N2W: Pretty sure I didn't use the intended solution. It wasn't really hard.
1N1W: No idea if this is the intended solution, it took me a lot to control that gentryii.
1N1E: Easy room but I liked it a lot.
2E: I don't think I understood the scroll. Did you build the room so that it should be impossible to read it?
1N2E: I broke this one, though the solution is not trivial.
1S2E: Thank you for that scroll, even though I didn't understood it soon. I saved 2 kegs.
1S2W: I tried a lot to break this room but I couldn't do it. I think I know what to do but haven't managed it yet.
1S1E: Too bad you don't want to add a puzzle for this room, but I think I understand you, these type of rooms are hard to build.

I'll try to play the rest of the hold in these days. By the way, I like your holds and puzzles.
Well done!

Demos attached.

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There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay. There's just this one, just this rock
-33th Skywatcher[Last edited by Red-XIII at 09-16-2016 12:43 PM]

1N2W: I could enforce the intended solution slightly more by having the 2nd cracked orb close a door where the south force arrows are, making it so that Beethro has to be the one in that little 2x2 room in order to escape. I'm not sure I want to; your gentryii manipulation seems about equally clever to the intended manipulation of two fegundo at once.

1N1W: You pretty much did the intended solution; the room is actually easier if you take the stick early since you can just shove the gentryii around from then on. The placement of the cracked walls and bombs is made to force you to go around south to the second cracked orb even though you can technically reach it from the north if you still have a sword.

2E: This and 2W are the very simple navigation puzzles, right. The scroll here is much more "story" than "puzzle" related, and isn't supposed to be terribly hard to reach. In-story it was put there by someone who saw people keep walking into the middle of the bomb pile to get one out instead of taking one from the outside, or something like that.

1S2E: You're better at managing skippers with a caber than I am; the two extra kegs are in the "original" solution used to kill the unavoidable first-spawn skippers and then the first nest. I don't have any problem with leaving the extras in.

1N2E: I can't figure out exactly how to enforce the intended solution in the limited space there is. A shame since getting the NE construct in place without losing it is actually a really cool manipulation. I guess I could just delete the first construct and require the player to do what you did with the 2 provided? Or does the leak make only one construct truly necessary?

1S1E: This was a matter of me having trouble combining the two relevant concepts into anything meaningful. I was running out of time because of the contest time limit and just decided to make it a joke room where not even the in-story person who was building these rooms could think of anything, and I'm basically just happy leaving it as that. It's true to the spirit of how this hold came about in the first place.

Thank you uncopy! I liked seeing the demos of you encountering the strange things in the "second level" for the first time.

I think I will go on ahead and make the leak fix for 1N2W. I think the intended solution is a bit more interesting of a puzzle. With this change made both of the room-breaking demos are corrupt, and at the very least I don't think there's any easy way to get Beethro out if he's not the one who hits the second orb.

quote:Xindaris wrote:
1N2E: I can't figure out exactly how to enforce the intended solution in the limited space there is. A shame since getting the NE construct in place without losing it is actually a really cool manipulation. I guess I could just delete the first construct and require the player to do what you did with the 2 provided? Or does the leak make only one construct truly necessary?

Well, for my solution 2 constructs are necessary but even if it's not trivial it's quite a different solution compared to yours. It's up to you if you want to leave both solutions or fix mine.

Anyway, I continued to play this and I completed it.

Final Bastion:
1N2W: Pretty sure it's fixed though I want to replay it again.
1S2W: After thinking a bit more I realized that this wasn't super hard as I initally thought. Nice room.
1S1W: "Puff becoming thin ice" puzzles, I kinda hate those but thanks to the stick this wasn't frustating. Ok room.

Distorted spacetime:
First impression was "what the heck?" This was super weird but also interesting, it's a neat concept. I think there are some US and also weird behaviour, but you warned us that it would have been weird, so I don't really know if everything is intended.
For example, in 2S I also attached a demo showing that the clone can kill me even with his body. Also, he moves even if I bump and stay in the same tile.
See demos attached.

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There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay. There's just this one, just this rock
-33th Skywatcher[Last edited by Red-XIII at 09-17-2016 12:46 PM]

Temporal echoes are so weird that intended solutions look like unintended ones. They can walk over pits and through walls, and they destroy any creature they step on. The scroll in 2S is supposed to hint that you can control them by bumping; it is intended behavior.

Both 2S1W and 2S1E have an "easy" and a "hard" solution; you found both easy solutions. The harder one in 2S1E is if you don't realize you can "cheat" and

Click here to view the secret text

×pull the echo out of the bomb area if you're careful and clever enough.

The "hard" solution to 2S1W requires actually putting all 3 Beethros on buttons by

Click here to view the secret text

×using the fact that Echoes won't go past the edges of the room.

It's still an experimental element because there are a lot of "standard" looking puzzles that would be broken by these things, and I can only get away with solutions of the form "but you can cheat!" at the "tutorial" stage of learning to use them. I'll need to tweak them carefully if I want them to be a viable general element for some larger hold. Their original form had a 5-turn delay (similar to the things in that one part of the Lavender Levels) but these only have a 2-turn delay. My original concept for them (which I may go back to later) had them die in any situation Beethro does and also be critical heroes, but I decided to make an "easier to use" version for this particular application and just made them invincible instead.

Notice!
If you're still paying attention to this, I think I've found a leak fix for 1N2E. I'd like if someone else can test if for sure it doesn't cause new unintended solutions. It's updated in the first post.

NOW I think I really have it fixed. I had to rearrange things and add some force arrows toggled by an on-off button that alters the final step of the intended solution slightly, but you definitely can't do either of the earlier cheats for it.

It is originally intended that Beethro hits the cracked orb, but I'm perfectly happy with any solution that still requires manipulating all 3 constructs into place (especially onto the south island area zone), and yours does that, so I'm fine with it. Thank you for working so much with me on this!

Issue: The final cut scene in the entrance can trigger if Beethro is on a hot tile on the turn after the speech "uh oh..." (turn 11). This will kill the player.

I didn't notice any other issues among the things that you are specifically asking for. Haven't played through the two main rooms in the final level yet, but the introductory rooms make the mechanic seem super interesting. I love the aesthetic here too.

I can provide feedback on individual rooms if you'd like but it sounds as though you're pretty set on keeping them as is. I will go ahead and say that while this is pretty fun for the most part, the gentryii chain manipulation in 1N2W and the soldier manipulation in 1N2E were a bit on the annoying side. Otherwise, good stuff.

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Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

Ah, you've helped me find another US without even realizing it: You're not supposed to be able to hit the cracked orbs in 1S2W until after the brains are dead. Easy fix with just a couple of force arrows.

I made a small scripting change to the last "scene" in The Entrance that should make dying on hot tiles that way not happen, at least not as often.

With regard to 1N2W, did the hint in the scroll help you at all as far as the gentryii chain manipulation goes?
For 1N2E, your solution is marginally harder than the intended one, which only ever has one live (including being in a revivable pile) construct free at a time. The room's supposed involve more pushing around the soldier than manipulating him, really.

I'll probably just submit this pretty soon, but I feel like I should still ask/mention stuff like that.

quote:Xindaris wrote:
With regard to 1N2W, did the hint in the scroll help you at all as far as the gentryii chain manipulation goes?

I read it, but chose to ignore the advice because I'm contrarian like that Also, I fully accept that I probably have a somewhat lower tolerance for fiddling around with gantryii and stalwarts/soldiers than many others. The reminder that power tokens allow for bump activating orbs is nice though since that's not a mechanic that's used all that often.

quote:Xindaris wrote:
For 1N2E, your solution is marginally harder than the intended one, which only ever has one live (including being in a revivable pile) construct free at a time. The room's supposed involve more pushing around the soldier than manipulating him, really.

Ahhh, I think I see what you're talking about. Yeah, it looks like I made this harder on myself than I needed to. That happens pretty frequently, so I shouldn't be surprised

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Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

Just making a note for all and sundry that I have put this up for HA approval as promised. I think everything should be straightforward and in order as far as backtracking issues go; the only possible issue I can think of is the cutscenes, which I've been pretty careful with to be sure they're well-behaved.